Jason Carr

Hi @FistyDollars, how newly added are they? What games are giving you trouble?

New beta is up. I had forgotten about the restructuring we had done with the LaunchBox Games Database as far as images and such go, so the more testing you guys can do with imports and searches, etc., the better. I think I covered everything but I did push this out quickly because of the broken beta. Thanks all, let me know if you run into anything.

Uploading a new beta now. We had two issues...the first of which was that I was relying on the Windows file system to give me accurate file system dates. I should've learned my lesson on that the last time I ran into that issue; that was causing the multiple downloads issues. Then the images were because we changed all the image type names on the games database. Doh. New beta will be up in a few.

Thanks all, looking into the metadata updating issues now.

shinra358 said fullscreen platform backgrounds like game backgrounds and dimming option for the bg platform names on the wheel. Thanks, shinra. By fullscreen platform backgrounds, what do you mean? I believe you already can add fanart images to platforms and use them as backgrounds. Oh, do you mean using the same background for all games of that platform? I remember that now...think I answered my own question. ;)

wallmachine Per the performance issue with the wheel, that baffles me a bit. I haven't been able to reproduce it. You're saying that it works fine for three cycles and then lags...can you describe it a bit more? Is it three pages of items or just three items? It could be possible that it's lagging because there's only two items in the list, I suppose. Per VLC, unfortunately there's almost nothing further I can do to fix any performance issues. I've done everything I can. The only thing I can suggest there is to use the Windows Media Player video playback engine. We may need to add another engine at some point that has better performance, but for now I've done all the tweaking I can do before the 6.0 release. Per the menus, I know they're overly simple. We can go back and revamp them a bit eventually, but truthfully they're much less important than the rest of the functionality. They're simple and easy enough to use so I would imagine people would rather me work on views for Big Box than improving the settings.

Hopefully soon we're going to add all these images to the LaunchBox Games Database and then of course add functionality to download them as needed in LaunchBox. So that's where we're headed, but it will be a bit before we get all that implemented.

Also, a quick update. Here are my goals for next week: - Replace the current Horizontal Boxes with Details view in Big Box with the same type of thing, but using CoverFlow instead of the ugly/crappy current solution for the horizontal boxes. This should address the issue that @bundangdon and @wallmachine mention above. - Add a new view for the games list that uses the new wheel view with game clear logos, much like the platforms wheel. - Prepare for and hopefully put out the official 6.0 release. Let me know if there's anything else you guys think we really need before we release 6.0.

Thanks all! New beta is out that adds the metadata updates from the LaunchBox Games Database that I've been promising. Metadata inside LaunchBox should no longer be out of date as compared to the LaunchBox Games Database. Here's how it works: - LaunchBox still *only* uses the local metadata database when searching for and importing games. This helps to keep the import processes much, much quicker than if we went out to the web for every search request. - New local metadata databases are available for download from the LaunchBox Games Database every day. We may update this in the future to provide updated downloads more than once a day, but for now we're sticking to once a day while we test things out. The metadata is newly updated every night at 1:00 AM PST. - When running the import or metadata update processes, updated metadata is automatically downloaded from the LaunchBox Games Database before the import process proceeds, but only if your local metadata is out of date. - When searching for a game in the Add/Edit window, if your local metadata is out of date, you'll be prompted to update before proceeding with the search. You can say yes or no to this prompt, and if you say no, then LaunchBox will just search against your local outdated metadata. - The metadata downloads right now are about 12 MB in size. Yes, ALL of the data in our database fits into a nice little 12 MB package. Pretty unreal. - If you're confused about images, they always come directly from the website, of course. It's only the metadata that is stored locally for searches. I think that should do it. Let me know if anyone hits any bugs. :)

Just to clear up some minor confusion, refreshing the cache should only be necessary when images for a game are *changed*. Adding new games should result in the images showing up automatically in Big Box, so hopefully it shouldn't be a regular requirement to refresh the caches. The one exception to this rule is if you add a clear logo image to a platform, you will still need to refresh the platform images for the wheel. This is because it automatically generates the plain-text image and needs to be refreshed in order to replace it with the actual image added. This is only for the platform images, though. Hopefully that isn't too confusing lol.

Yes, it's trying to install to the destination folder and some program on your computer is refusing to let it, so adding the destination folder to the exclusions list should work. However, if you have several different anti-virus programs installed on your computer (which is generally not a good idea, by the way), then it could be any number of them causing the issue. In that case you probably have a nightmare on your hands, and we're not going to be able to help you troubleshoot that.

Hi @gizmo, try adding the *destination folder* that you are installing to (your LaunchBox folder path) to the Bitdefender exclusions list. If that doesn't work, then I'd say just uninstall Bitdefender and use the built-in Microsoft Windows Defender virus protection.

Odd. Windows Media Player on my systems automatically removes the black bars in Big Box. What versions of Windows are you guys running?

We'll leave this here so the people who are helping beta test can have first dibs. ;)

OR...lol. I should have thought about this earlier. This works too: https://plasso.co/jason@unbrokensoftware.com That will allow you to specify any amount. Thanks again, Eric. We can give that link out to anyone who wants to donate.

@eric If you specifically want to donate $30, then you can buy the $20 regular license and then just renew the license for another year for $10. Not the most convenient thing in the world, but should work. :)

shinra358 said I think you meant exit while locked not exit while unlocked. It's in bigbox wrong as well. Pardon me if this was said earlier for I didn't read the various posts that were made when I saw this notice in email. Thanks, shinra, good catch. Will fix for the next beta. :)

Wow, thank you Eric. We're still working on adding the option for donations somewhere. If you want to just purchase a regular license to gift to a friend (or even just to throw away lol), that'd be awesome. I really do appreciate it. :)

Great to hear. I did a lot of experimentation to try and help with performance; that was one thing that didn't seem to cause any harm so I never switched it back. I think it may have been because your library is just a lot bigger than mine.

Alright, new version is up. I reordered some things and it didn't seem to make much difference on my systems but obviously it made a big difference for @emko. Hopefully this version resolves the performance issues.

Thanks, @emko. I think I found the issue. Will upload a new version shortly.

Sorry @anyany, I got my hands full. Will take a look at it soon.

But anyways, @emko, I wouldn't waste time recording a video of beta 6, as I already know how it's supposed to work. But if you can record a video of the issue, that might be helpful so we can see what's happening. Thanks!

Odd, still seeing no delays in the text list view of the games. Both VLC and Windows Media Player load the videos quickly; is anyone else seeing new delays like this? Obviously @emko's system specs are not the problem. You should be able to find the beta 6 setup in your Updates folder inside your LaunchBox folder, @emko. Should be fine just to install over top.

I'm not seeing any delays at all when using Windows Media Player. What view are you seeing that in @emko? Also, 3-5 second delays...that shouldn't be happening with VLC either. We'll get it fixed; let me know what views you're seeing that in and make sure that you are in fact using Windows Media Player.